Snowed In
by Iellix
Summary: Hatter experiences his first snowstorm, and ends up snowed in. Fortunately, Alice is an old hand at dealing with snow days. And lots of other things. Mild lemon, one-shot.


I didn't intend to write more smut. I _definitely_ didn't intend to write anything to do with snow, because frankly I've had it up to my butt with snow for a while. (No, seriously. I'm up to my butt in snow over here. I'll pay someone in smut to come dig my car out!) But, funny sleeping patterns and medicine all conspired and here I am again, writing more. I hope you enjoy it. Happy almost-Giftmas to those of you who celebrate it. To those of you who don't, I hope you have fun in the ancient traditions of Chinese-food-and-movie-night.

Disclaimer: Hatter and Alice are not my creations. I am not gaining any profit of any kind from their use. No copyright infringement is intended. These are not the droids you're looking for.

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o…o

It snowed.

And snowed.

And snowed.

All yesterday, all the next day. In one 24-hour period, three feet of snow was dumped on the area and the city came to a grinding halt. No one was coming in, no one was going out. Bizarrely, this all suited Hatter, to whom snow was a novelty. It got plenty cold in Wonderland, he told her, but it hardly ever snowed in the lowlands and _definitely_ not in the city, so he sat in the front window like a house-cat, _fascinated,_ watching it fall.

She thought it was cute. It was something so mundane to her—snow was just a chilly annoyance that stuck to her clothes and her hair and always, _always_ ended up in her boots no matter how hard she tried to keep it out. But it was new and alien for him so his attitude towards it was completely different.

Hatter was like that with lots of things in her world. He was amazed or confused or curious about everyday things—newspaper delivery, laptop computers, cell phones, the light in the refrigerator—that were to her so ordinary. It was kind of thrilling to rediscover her own world through him. Even a few months into his life on this side of the Looking Glass, he was still sometimes confronted with objects or concepts that he'd never been confronted with before.

Like snow.

"How much is there gong to be?" He asked.

She shrugged. "I dunno. Could be six inches. Could be a few feet. We won't know until it stops."

And he just found that _even more exciting_ and Alice shook her head.

Then she bundled him up and took him outside for the afternoon to play in it—while the snow was still at a relatively manageable eighteen inches—and he was so childishly excited she couldn't help but laugh. She showed him how to pack snowballs and showed him where there were people building snowmen. Then she procured some trays from the deli on the corner and they went sledding down the steps of the public library because there was so much accumulation already that the stairs were more like a hill, and Hatter crashed magnificently into a public phone and then into a fire hydrant and then into a group of teenagers pelting the people passing by with snowballs, which Alice wasn't sure was an accidental crash at all.

By late afternoon they were cold and tired and trudged back to her apartment in wet clothes and knee-deep in the snow. Stripping down in front of each other was somehow much less sexy when it involved layer upon layer of cold, snowy clothes and scarves and coats and gloves and then standing there shivering in long underwear. They hung their things up in the bathroom so they'd dry and then Hatter went to make some tea.

"It's just going to keep doing this?" He was still watching the snow, but now with less fascination and more concern.

"Weather reports all say yes," she said. She sat down next to him on the sofa with her hands wrapped around the steaming mug. "Don't worry. The worst that'll happen is we get snowed in for a few days while they clear the roads and stuff. It happens sometimes."

"Snowed in?" Clearly this was a phrase he'd never heard before. "You mean we won't be able to get out?" He looked out the window to the snow-covered ground below. It was up to the first-story windows by now and the sidewalks were all but impassable.

"It's possible. Don't worry, we won't die here or anything."

But he didn't seem to be concerned about what might happen to them; instead he grinned that cheeky grin. "No one can get out, no one can get in?"

She had to smile herself at that. She was thinking the same thing herself and she liked the idea of being shut up in the apartment with Hatter for a few days. Just the two of them, all by themselves, and a wonderful excuse to share body heat and do 'lots of other things'.

Just as they were getting warm—warm and quite _cozy—_on the couch together, the phone rang and of _course_ it would be her mother.

"Yes, Mom, I know," Alice said. "I'm sorry—I _know,_ Mom! We're snowed in, you're snowed out, and there's not much we can do about that."

She was pacing back and forth in the living room in her thermal underwear and fuzzy wool socks. She had the phone base tucked under her arm and the phone between her neck and shoulder and the wire trailing behind her like a tail as she talked.

Hatter was on the sofa, wrapped in a blanket, watching her walk back and forth.

"Well, I'm stuck here for a while," her mother was saying from the other end. "All the non-emergency transportation is stopped and the roads are totally _choked."_

"I figured that, they've only been saying it since yesterday on every news station—don't go anywhere if you don't _have _to. I dunno what you want me to do."

Carol sighed loudly into the phone and Alice pulled it away from her ear.

"I could be a few more days is all," she said. "Until I can get a train out of here."

"All right."

"Is David there?" Her mother's voice was downright accusatory.

Now it was Alice's turn to sigh. "Yes, Mother. The buses aren't running and he can't get out because of the snow," she said, which was mostly true because there were enormous snowdrifts piled up everywhere in addition to the three feet of snow, and it would be impossible for Hatter to walk all the way home; that they'd just been outside playing in the snow a few hours earlier didn't seem pertinent. "I told him he could stay here until we could dig out."

"I guess it can't be helped. Just be careful."

"Careful?"

"You know what I mean. Just don't get carried away."

She felt her ears start to turn red. "Mom, please."

"You're my baby, Alice, I'm just trying to look out for you."

"I'm also a grownup."

"Really, don't get carried away! You could be stuck there a few days, I don't want you to go crazy like a teenager in an empty house—"

"What d'you want me to do, Ma?" She interrupted. "Go to the hardware store, buy an industrial-grade chastity belt and a Master Lock?"

"Alice!" Carol gasped.

"We'll be fine. Concentrate on sleeping at the train station or something."

"Okay, Alice. I'll stop. I'll call you when I know more about how I'm going to get home. Bye!"

"Goodbye, Mother!"

Then she slammed the phone down on the receiver and untangled her feet from the cord and set the whole thing back on the side table next to the couch.

Hatter was laughing into the blanket.

"I'm that funny, am I?" She asked.

"Yeah."

No other man in his right mind would have said that to his girlfriend—no other man could've said it to _her_ and gotten away with it. But Hatter got away with it because he wasn't in his right mind, and because she trusted him so thoroughly, and because he was Hatter and there wasn't anything he could do that would really make her hate him.

"Do you talk to your mother that way often, missy?" He asked with mock-sternness.

"Only when she makes silly demands."

"Oh?"

"She's stuck at the train station near the hotel where they had the conference—nothing's running so she can't get out and she can't go back. She knows you're here so she has it in her head that we're…"

And then she went quiet because Hatter was grinning cheekily at her and that single dimple appeared in the corner of that lopsided smile and her heart began to quicken.

"Knotting and gendering like toads in a cistern?" He finished for her in that curiously mad Wonderland-ish manner of his.

She raised her eyebrows at him.

"Really, Hatter?"

"What?"

"C'mon, that's pushing it. Even for you, I mean, that's pushing it."

"How do you mean?"

"'Toads in a cistern'? Where the _hell_ did you come up with that one?"

"I didn't. It's already been written."

"What kind of freak wrote something like that?"

"Shakespeare."

She flopped herself down on the other end of the couch from him. "Oh," she said. "I feel stupid now."

He reached across and dragged her into his cocoon of blanket. His hands were cold but the rest of him was nice and warm. He smelled like Hatter—like leather from his favourite jacket and old books and strong tea.

"You shouldn't," he murmured gently into her hair, breath near her neck. Then he lipped her ear and tightened his arms around her and he was warm and he smelled good and she promptly forgot all about toads and cisterns and snow and silly mothers and feeling stupid.

She tilted her head to the side to let him have her neck and he kissed it eagerly, hotly, from behind her ear down to her shoulder where he bit her gently. Then harder. Then a little harder still, _almost_ hard enough to hurt, until she _almost_ yelped and then he kissed the bite away and made his way back up her neck.

Alice purred softly as he left slow, burning little kisses on her neck and around to her throat; he evidently liked the sound because she felt him smile against her neck as he made a little approving purr of his own. She leaned back and reached behind her and looped her arms around his neck while he lipped her throat. It sent hot tingles through her whole body, excitement and anticipation and arousal all shooting through her body at once and then pooling hot between her thighs and he hadn't even gotten her undressed yet.

Hatter was like that. He knew how to push all of her buttons all at once and could turn her into a puddle seemingly without really even trying. The first time she slept with him was all exploration, testing, feeling—they were both new to one another, uncharted territory, but Hatter was good at finding sweet-spots that even _she_ didn't know she had.

He flicked his tongue over the soft spot under her ear and then kissed it and she sighed and moaned at the same time. His hands went slow and deliberate down and up and back down her sides and then carefully—hesitantly—slipped under thermal shirt, which was starting to feel a little _too_ warm by then. He hesitated because he wouldn't do anything if she didn't want him to, wouldn't do something to her that she didn't like.

"Tell me to stop," he breathed in her ear. His voice was low and raspy and his breathing was starting to get heavier. "Tell me and I'll stop."

No other boyfriend or lover she'd ever had would have done that. Even Jack wouldn't have stopped after the go-ahead. But Hatter waited for her to tell him to go on, always stopped and waited for her say-so, even though the last thing he wanted to do was to stop.

"Don't you _dare_ stop," she said back quickly, turning around so she could push him back into he cushions and hover over him with her hair just tickling his face. His cheeks were flushed and his hair was disarrayed and wild—moreso than usual—and she could see his chest heave as he breathed.

"If you insist." And he smiled and she felt herself grow even warmer. His hands were still cool when he slipped them up into her shirt and up her stomach to her breasts and she mentally thanked herself for forgetting to wear a bra this morning.

He pushed her shirt up with one hand and the other was all over her chest. He cupped one breast and ran his thumb over the nipple; she breathed in sharply. He moved down and licked it slowly, teasingly. She let her breath out in a sigh as he moved onto the other breast. His hands were rough from the cold and his mouth was soft and the contrast sent shivers up her spine.

Her shirt was bunched up awkwardly under her arms and Hatter had to keep pushing it back up, so she nudged his hands away and sat back.

"What—?" He frowned.

She gave him a wicked look and slowly began to slide the light pink shirt up her torso, like a dressing-in-layers version of a striptease. He watched her intently, eagerly drinking in the sight of every newly exposed inch of bare skin.

That was the thing with Hatter—he made her feel like the only woman in the world. She wasn't the only woman he'd ever been with and she _knew_ she wasn't, but when they were together he made her feel like there had never been another. That she was special, and beautiful, and perfect. Alice had never thought of herself as needy, or as needing constant attention or reassurance, but when he looked at her so hungrily, so sweetly… it made her insides all turn into soup and her brain to mush.

He was looking at her that way now. She inched her shirt up a little more, and a little more, and then pulled it off over her head in one swift movement and threw it somewhere, where it was promptly forgotten about.

He unconsciously licked his lips as he looked her up and down, as if for the first time even though he'd seen her naked many times before, and she felt a pang of raw excitement go through her. Arms around her, hands on her back, he pulled her down to him and kissed her. The kiss left her breathless. He crushed her to his chest; she could feel the soft, warm, silky fabric under her bare skin but that wasn't nearly enough for her.

She pushed his shirt up over his stomach and up to his chest, but it wouldn't go any further unless he let her go, and it didn't seem like he was going to be done kissing her any time soon. His muscles all tightened as she smoothed her hands over him, then relaxed. She giggled into his kiss and tickled circles on his stomach with her fingernails, which made him squirm quite delightfully underneath her.

He reluctantly pushed her back and he sat up to pull his shirt off, letting it drop to the floor; he propped himself up on his elbows, watching _her_ as she looked him over carefully. Alice had always been fond of big men with chiselled muscles, like Jack; Hatter was small and slight and his muscles not sharply defined, though they were most definitely _there_ and she knew it. It was like he was built for deception—he looked as though he couldn't harm anyone.

She kissed him softly, lingering on his lips and then moving down to his neck, then pressed a warm kiss to his chest just over his heart. She could feel it beating, a steadily excitable _thud-thump, thud-thump!_ under her lips. She flattened her tongue and wet-licked over the nipple, then blew gently on it and watched it tighten. She felt his heart go a little harder and he gave a strangled groan and he threaded his hands into her loose hair as she turned her attention on the other one.

Then she kissed him quickly and sat back, feeling pleased with herself. He frowned and tried to pull her back down to him, but she resisted and shook her head.

"Oh? What're you planning, my Alice?" He purred in a voice so smooth and sexy she wondered if it'd be at all possible to orgasm from sound alone.

"Just wait."

She sat back a little further and shifted her weight, but forgot they were sitting on the sofa and got too close to the edge of the cushion and ended up on the floor.

"That wasn't it, was it?" He asked cheekily, coming to kneel next to her.

"Not quite, no," she squeaked after several minutes of laughter. It wasn't _that_ funny, but she laughed because if she didn't she'd feel silly.

"You all right?"

She nodded, still giggling. "I just think that, as far as a seduction technique goes, falling off the furniture is pretty useless."

"I wouldn't say that," he told her with his trademark lopsided grin.

Her eyebrows climbed her forehead; he nuzzled her ear and then her neck and kissed her cheek.

"Anything could seduce me—as long as it's you," he murmured hotly in her ear in a tone that made her shiver excitedly, and she melted like a sissy. She believed him, too.

She stood up out of the tangle of blankets and pulled Hatter to his feet.

"Come on," she said. "Let's try this somewhere else."

He wordlessly kicked the blankets aside and obediently let her take him to her bedroom; she closed the door, even though there was no reason to do so, and pounced on him. She pushed backwards a little at a time, kissing him harder with every step. She backed him up until he was right at the bed, then pushed him over onto the bedding and climbed on after him; her legs on either side of his torso, her hands on each shoulder, her hair ever so slightly tickling his skin.

He laughed.

So did she.

The rest of their clothes were discarded—thermals and underwear and heavy socks falling on the floor—and Hatter tried to turn her over and pin her underneath him, but she wasn't having that. Not this time. She turned them both over and held his wrists down.

She shook her head. "Nope," she imitated him by popping the 'p' and then kissed him. She took his hands and made him grasp the headboard above him. "Hold onto that. And don't move."

"What if I do?"

She kissed his neck and then bit down. "You won't."

His wicked grin told her that he'd comply with her demand—for the time being. But Hatter was Hatter and he was never one to let such an obvious challenge go unmet.

She went slowly, slowly, licking and mouthing kisses all the way down his chest; his breathing got heavier and his chest heaved and his hands began to shake where they gripped the headboard. She looked up; his eyes were closed tightly. She laughed softly against his skin and he tightened his muscles and he came out in goosebumps.

She ran a thin line up his stomach with the very tip of her tongue, barely even touching him, and he whined softly.

"Alice…"

She nipped his collarbone. He yelped.

"_Alice."_

The way her name burst from his lips, a moan and a plea and a serenade all jumbled together, made her heart flutter and her stomach do flips and she almost—_almost—_contemplated turning over and letting him have the upper hand. But she was having much too much fun playing with him to want to stop. At least, not just yet.

Her tongue traced his collarbone and he whimpered again. She felt his hand in her hair and she growled low in her throat and bit down on his neck until he hissed in pain.

She licked the bite mark and kissed it and then sat up; she gave him an evil little grin and shook her head.

"You moved," she purred. Then she replaced his hands on the headboard.

"You're wicked," he panted. His hair was stuck to his forehead with sweat.

"But you like me anyway," she said.

He smiled shakily.

She leaned forward and hovered her lips just a hair's breadth away from his. Hatter squirmed and panted but he kept a good grip on the headboard. Instead of kissing him, she nipped his bottom lip and started back at the top again, tormenting him from the neck down.

She rather enjoyed seeing what responses she could elicit from him—growls, long whimpers, low groans; he rolled his hips against her and squirmed and whispered her name and excitement flared in her stomach.

She made her way down, biting and licking all the way to his groin, where she stopped.

He didn't even bother to keep himself under control.

"Alice—_please,"_ he begged. Actually _begged._

She grasped his hips and dug her nails in and he moaned and tossed his head back. His hands on her headboard were shaking and she absently wondered if he wasn't going to break it. She smiled a little wickedly at him and lowered her head so her mouth hovered just over the tip of his erection. Her tongue darted out and she licked her lips and—

He must've moved _awfully_ fast to turn her over and leave her on her back wondering what the hell just happened. He was holding her arms down to either side of her and heaving raspy breaths; his eyes were hard and he looked quite savage and she would have laughed, but somehow it seemed a bit like the wrong place and time for laughter.

"You moved," she said simply.

"I know."

Being snowed in for an indefinite period of time with Hatter was a good thing, Alice decided. He knew how to make her squirm and she knew how to make him squeak and they tired each other out between tormenting each other and fighting for the dominant position.

And when they were both spent, they curled up close and warm under layers and layers of blankets and fell asleep.

There were no Suits on their tails, no urgent need to deal with the Stone of Wonderland. Alice's mother was far away and wouldn't be bothering them. It was just them, alone, and warm, and comfy, and safe.

Outside, it kept snowing.

o…o

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Well, there it is. Just something quick that I wanted to get out in time for tonight. It's not nearly as sexy or graphic as the other fic, but I hope you enjoyed it anyway. It was fun to write. And cute. I've got it in my head to write a post-series Hatter-and-Alice story… whether or not I can actually write it remains to be seen. Anyway, feedback is always greatly appreciated should you choose to leave it!


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